Vanity Fair, Vol. 6, No. 147

This cover satirizes the boxing scandal surrounding Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali's namesake), depicting him clutching a bag labeled 'CASSIA CASS COSH'—a visual pun on the weapon-assisted violence of street crime. The penny press of the 1860s thrived on such sensational imagery, mixing sports gossip, criminal intrigue, and social commentary in cheap weekly serials aimed at working-class readers. These illustrated periodicals pioneered the marriage of visual narrative and serialized storytelling that would evolve into modern comics, establishing conventions still recognizable today: exaggerated caricature, melodramatic framing, and the reduction of complex figures to types.